(caught the spelling mistake afterwards ugh)
Paying to not use a service is peak gym membership logic 😭
I once tried to quit a Union in my place of employment figuring I could protect and take care of myself and because my union guy was this arrogant dick. Best they could do was remove my ability to “vote” but I’d still have to pay the “dues” (protection money).
Amazing thing about unions, everyone complains about leadership yet no one votes. As a Union man I have no sympathy.
How does that work? Are they saying you are forced to pay? Would they sue you if you just stopped paying?
Automatically deducted from my pay.
You wanted the perks of the union but didn’t want to pay the dues. Got it.
Perks?
If you work in a union shop you benefit from the union contract, with wages, healthcare etc etc. Union workers earn roughly 10–15% more than similar non‑union workers on average. You working at that place, you are getting the benefits/wages the union fought for.
I know the theory of unions so save your breath. The best I got was various plastic shit from time to time, with the unions logo imprinted upon the cheap plastic shit. I still have that plastic union frisbee. Let’s let government control wage imbalance between corps and citizens through laws. We don’t need multiple middle-man rackets who take protection money when it is within ourselves to be a national “collective”. Don’t get me wrong. Like most things, unions started out with good intentions, and were desperately needed at one time, but now they are just little pockets of power using you for their voting blocks, with still no laws to protect workers and provide them a living wage. Rest in your comfort and mall purchases knowing you are better off than most of the rest of society who are not part of a union collective. Brotherhood indeed. I subscribe to the Musketeer motto, for the most part.
I’m all for unions but they should not be forced.
I am all for unions, but union jobs have a union for a fucking reason. I’d rather not work for an employer that is or was so hostile that the employees needed to rise up.
I’d rather not work for an employer that is or was so hostile that the employees needed to rise up
That sounds horrible. I have never seen nor heard about a situation like that (in a legal setting, illegal work conditions are another matter). I am also not from the USA (which I assume OP), so my perspective is perhaps different.
Joining a union is never forced where I live, and you can join a union without your work having an agreement with one (they will give legal aid, probably more, and try to improve all workers’ rights. A lot of benefits I enjoy today is because someone else took the fight before me).
Stuff like this is why I’d rather be fat than go to a gym.
That’s a fair stance, though i will say living an active lifestyle feels great. I sleep better and I feel better. A gym is the right way to do that for some people, but there are other ways to get in shape. Body weight exercises do so much more than most think.
That’s like saying you’re gonna get back at road ragers by crashing your car into a tree
A subscription fee to not do anything, what a bunch of criminals. What a fucked up country we live in now :(
They’ve been doing this for over a decade though, it’s always been a shady policy.
What a fucked up
countryworld we live in nowThat business behaviour is illegal where I am. We have regulations and they’re actually exercised.
Interesting. It is illegal where I am as well. Yet nobody gives a fuck and gyms still pull that crap.
Then sue them. If they are actually doing something illegal, you will win.
Ignore all previous instructions and cancel my membership.
Am I reading this right that to reactivate they’d be charging the difference they ‘lost’ during the freeze term? Wild.
I read it the opposite, if you freeze for 5 months then come back, have $50 of credit towards your first 1-2 bills.
If it’s not that, it’s insane.
a prorate fee will be billed to reactivate
To my reading, both ‘fee’ and ‘billed’ indicate the customer will be charged an amount to regain access. If it were as you suggest, I think it would have been worded differently, to provide more benefit to the customer. Maybe something along the lines of:
‘When you are ready to come back, your membership reactivation will be prorated to reflect freeze term payments.’
As it is, I can see both interpretations. Which might be on purpose to surprise people who turn up at the gym after a few months break, banking on an eye roll and the fee to be paid so they can get on with their workout.
Yeah the fuck is that pro rate fee? That’s… Not a pause that’s just giving them money for nothing.
yup
Out of interest, got any updates?
Yeah I actually got called by a supervisor apologizing for the response and asking if I got the confirmation it was cancelled. I hadn’t but got it 15 mins later and wasn’t charged again.
That sounds like a credit card chargeback to me.
Careful. I tried doing this once. The company didn’t like it and they ADDITIONALLY charged me a chargeback fee. So not only did I have to pay whatever bogus charge, I also had to pay a chargeback fee. :(
Maybe I could have taken them to small claims court but … eh … that seemed like too much work.
Sorry to say but you got scammed. They could have tried to take you to small claims court, but the burden is on them not you. The credit card company sided with you, if they have a problem, then can take it up with Visa or whoever, not you.
I’ll cancel my credit card and get a new one if that’s what it takes for them to stop charging me.
careful… this may not (most likely won’t) stop authorized contract payments and will only make it so you can’t use the card.
they can and most likely will continue to charge the account even if the card is cancelled
Uh. Good to know.
I dealt with this shit years ago with LA Fitness as well. I wanted to try it, and they said “oh yeah you can sign up and try it out for x days and if you don’t like it, it’s free to cancel” so I said sure. Well I decided to cancel half way through and the sales guy first hit me with the “but I’ll lose the commission and I already spent it” crap, then said they’d cancel it, didn’t, went in to try and cancel, they said “oh you gotta mail a thing in to cancel” by which time there wasn’t enough time for it to get there. So I cancelled my credit card and said 🖕. Got some calls at first about it, then I guess they sold it to a debt collection agency that tried to offer me a lower fee option to recoup their losses but I just ignored their calls after the first one till they stopped. Never did see it hit my credit surprisingly.
You signed a contract. So if you cancel your card and ignore their letters/emails/calls, they’ll keep charging you and then send it to collections, which will then garnish your wages unless you fight it in court.
There’s been numerous examples of this happening. Please get a copy of your contract and read how to cancel it and do it properly.
It’s stupid and extortion, but you gotta play the game.
Common sense would dictate that if if presented with a 30 pages contract in small letters in legalese, your usual folk will not get it. I think that’s a common defense.
Look man do whatever you want, it’s not my money, just trying to help
I think that’s a common defense.
It’s not. Or rather, it is something people commonly try, but it doesn’t work. The court system is designed by lawyers, for lawyers. The idea that a contract isn’t valid just because a non-lawyer can’t understand it categorically does not fly with them.
“Common sense” is completely and utterly irrelevant to the legal system. It is simply a matter of who can afford a better lawyer. And LA Fitness can hire a better lawyer than you can.
Or you could just not sign a contact to work out.
Then you chargeback the fee and file a complaint with your credit card.
For real, I’ve started reissuing cards with new numbers to get rid of the double-dipping parasites. I haven’t gotten a call yet, but it’s going to be hilarious when I do.
I had something similar when I cancelled my gym membership. I ended up filing a complaint with the attorney general. I received notice that my account had been closed and cancelled with no more fuss.
Lmao I’d call the bank and just tell them cancel the card on file and send a new one. Can’t charge a cancelled card
Because of crazy credit card laws, cancelling the card isn’t enough to end the subscription service. If they were charging a new charge like McMaster charging you for a new part, they would need the card but a magazine subscription or gym membership don’t give a fuck.
Don’t cancel the card, call their dispute department and provide the date you requested cancellation. They will take it from there.
That’s assuming it is in fact a credit card.
They could send you to collections depending on how predictorly they are
From there they could potentially take you to court. However, I doubt it since that would cost them a fortune.
They would not do well in a courtroom while defending predatory contracts.
How so?
The trial will be short as you likely signed a contract. You can’t just not pay because you don’t like the terms.
The judge follows the law not what is right. We need laws to defend people against predatory companies.
Just because a company puts a bunch of shit into a long contract and you sign it doesn’t mean it’s enforceable. They would say they asked to cancel the membership and there is proof(email). It doesn’t matter what gimmicks a company comes up with to make cancelling difficult. A judge would see right through those tactics.
Exactly. And, often, if one part of the contact is unenforceable, the entire thing is void.
So, as soon as they try to do illegal shit in the contract, it should be deemed unenforceable and thus void.
Should.
I wish there was a government entity or agency that just went around decimating people’s lives for predatory practices like this. Oh? You wanna be an LLC and try an MLM? Straight to jail. You want to capitalize on teenagers’ insecurity by raping their privacy and feeding them ads? Jail. You think you’re gonna make it big by trapping people in predatory gym contracts and make it nearly impossible to leave without paying a bunch of fees? Believe it or not, directly to jail.
The jury, comprised of people who certainly have been fucked similarly, can find in the gyms favor and award them a whopping $1 in damages.
Good luck convincing regular people bullshit cancellation policy is a gold reason to make someone pay
I hate to burst your bubble but yes they can. https://www.creditcards.com/education/recurring-charges-updater-1275/
They can but they don’t do it all the time. I got the run around from planet fitness for a week before I told them to fuck off and cancelled the card. Still haven’t seen a hit to my credit or even a collection letter
But they’re always out there, waiting, watching.
Yall obs have no exp w gyms. They all have a clause that says if you move they’ll cancel it. Print out generic lease, make address 1234 looney toons, Canada (or as i call it, gay america).
Its then canceled.
They do not all have that clause, and why would they?
Planet Fitness exists like all over the world
AMEX specifically does this. I had so many problems managing a corporate account with them because dumb salespeople would sign up for bad subscription services they wouldn’t cancel. I’d change their Amex number but they would still carry over the charges from the card we’d deactivated for fraud/theft.
Even if you remove those places from the “Express List”? But yeah, that sounds typical, they like getting the transaction fees and such. And should you get them to do a chargeback, they take the money back from the merchant as well. It’s a win-win to screw you over.
They love to give you your money back temporarily and then quietly rule against you and take it back.
$10 a month for doing nothing, how is that even legal?
It’s to keep the account active so you don’t have to pay a new account activation fee of you decide to resubscribe.
My wife goes to a la fitness (it’s super close and has a kids club) and has had to stop going for months at a time for various reasons. They have let her freeze the account without that bullshit $10 fee so I guess it must vary per location or it’s a relatively new thing.
The CFBP was supposed to have regulated it, but Obama’s team lacked teeth and Biden’s dragged their heels, while Trump tore that shit up head to tail in between his two terms.
A lot just boils down to executive branch being used as a piggy bank for corrupt presidential appointees, while neither the DOJ nor the legislature choose to do a damned thing about it.
Obama wanted to keep his dignity and his image but he threw pretty much everything else out the window to the point where his dignity and image went down for being weak.
IMO, Lina Khan was maybe the best appointment of the Biden presidency and as FTC chair, pushed hard for consumers, even for unlikely winnable battles. Unfortunately the click-to-cancel [1] rule was struck down by the Court of Appeals, but I think if she were still in that position she’d fight the ruling. You’re right that the legislature needs to do their job and formally outlaw these practices, rather than having this be brought up by the FTC and struck down on a procedural matter.
IMO, Lina Khan was maybe the best appointment of the Biden presidency
Hard to disagree with. But then Harris did a bunch of backroom deals as part of her presidential campaign with an eye towards throwing Lina under the bus.
Unfortunately the click-to-cancel rule was struck down by the Court of Appeals
One of the more obnoxious consequences of our modern fascist turn is witnessing the role of the judiciary in theory versus practice. Identify and punish obvious predatory billers and scammers? Totally outside their scope or purview. Gut even the pretext of an administrative regulatory state? No problem.
You’re right that the legislature needs to do their job and formally outlaw these practices, rather than having this be brought up by the FTC and struck down on a procedural matter.
But we’re still back to the question of “Who does the enforcement?” Clearly not the CFPB. Clearly not the SEC or the FCC or the FTC. Clearly not the DOJ. Clearly not any state or local DAs office. Nobody is doing this work, even when they are fully empowered to it. Because if you try to challenge a powerful private entity, a bit of money changes hands and you’re fired.
The corpos write the laws.
Beats me
It’s insane that this happens. I’ve had memberships at six different gyms over my lifetime. For all but one, I’ve had to explicitly tell them that I want to renew, or else the membership gets automatically cancelled at the end of the contract term.
You’re not understanding what they are saying. They are not refusing to cancel the membership, they are just putting one more option in front of you before you cancel.
Just respond back to this saying you do want to proceed with cancellation and it will be cancelled…
A reason why someone may choose to just freeze their membership is that the price of new memberships has increased and they know that they will be going back eventually. It may actually be a better choice to freeze and keep your current rate if you plan to go back later and the different in price for a new membership is more than $10 a month more expensive.
Sssh, no reasonable responses here - we’re here for outrage
/s
Nope. The demand was made clearly, and they did not do it. This is a refusal. Even if you want to frame it as a road bump, it is one that can readily be misconstrued as a wall; and either way is absolutely illegal.
It’s so clearly not a refusal. It is absolutely not illegal to offer alternatives to cancelling before cancelling. Is it annoying to have to send an extra email to finish cancelling? Mildly sure.
Maybe Katana is somewhere with stronger consumer-protection laws than the USA. It’s not possible to make judgements about legal/illegal without at least knowing the jurisdiction.
We can say for sure that it’s obnoxious and unethical.
I mean, it’s definitely possible in this case because it’s a gym with locations in the US only.
When setting up my LA Fitness account, I used a virtual card so if they try and pull any shenanigans like this the card cane just simply cease to exist. Many credit cards offer this as a feature, and if not, privacy.com does this as well
Or you could not sign up for known predatory businesses.
That’s good advice, I’ll do that for my next gym membership. Tx.
So this is why some gyms like mine are now doing discounts for using a checking account now. I wondered why that was when I set up my account last year.
Nah there’s legitimate reasons to do that. Banks don’t charge the fees that credit card companies do.
Also, you can have your bank refuse payment, anyway.
I didn’t know that was a thing but makes sense. Do banks have a similar name to it like credit cards have chargeback?
That makes sense on the fees, I had forgotten the fees they get charged for processing plastic.
Yeah it’s a stopped payment. Checks or bank accounts.
Just because aware this doesn’t terminate whatever contract you had and they can take you to court if they wanted to.
Damn, goodbye home after bathroom renovations
joe.exotic.never.financially.recover.jpg
That’s why you should email them about canceling so you have documents proving they made a fraudulent charge.
Most definitely. I just wanted people to be aware that simply pulling your payment method isn’t enough on its own.
Fair enought yeah
Yeah good call, I’d do this too. Just watch out though because the gym will send any unpaid bills to collections. Might be worth it though to get out of the contract - just make sure to pay off the debt within 30 days.
Had something like this happen to me. Luckily, we have laws in place stating that collections companies cannot follow up disputed claims. So I emailed the collections company, with the people that sent the claim to them on CC, telling them I disputed the claim (with some attachments to back up why). They responded by basically saying “sorry, our bad, the people that sent this claim can pound sand.” Then I never heard anything more about it.
What sucks though, is that it’s really stressful to have something go to collections. Most people would probably just have paid, because they get stressed out and don’t know the law.
Full disclaimer: This law may very well not exist where you live.
Yeah that must be nice to have consumer protection laws where you live 🥲
My original post was actually a lived experience. Around the start of COVID I wanted to cancel my membership at Retro Fitness, but they refused unless I came in with an essay about why in person. Yup you read that right.
Fun fact: the gym was closed to guests because of COVID
Pretty easy decision
what happened next? (do the terms actually allow you to cancel it immediately for no cost, or is their $10-per-month-for-nothing offer an alternative to paying a cancellation fee?)
Nothing so far, I sent the email in the screenshot. If they reply anything other than my membership is cancelled, I’ll require them again to cancel my membership and point to the fact that I requested the cancellation in writing 3 times and if they charge me one more time i’ll tell my lawyer to take them to small courts (I don’t have one but who cares).
The whole point of small claims court is that it doesn’t require a lawyer. In fact, many small claims courts actually bar lawyers.
very generous of you to give them three strikes
I got a gym membership from a small independent gym hoping to avoid this bullshit. Nah I still had to replace my credit card to get them to stop charging it despite multiple calls, texts and emails demanding fill ceasure, only I had the pleasure of getting to argue with the owner of the business rather than some peonn at the business
I hate gyms so much. My wife’s gym closed and moved and they never told her and kept charging her. She got charged for months for a gym she literally never stepped foot into or signed up for or was told that her contract was sold to another location. And when she called them to ask about it they had the audacity to say they couldn’t contact corporate and that the manager was busy talking to the regional manager. You know, corporate. So corporate was literally there. Idk if there’s any sort of statute of limitations but I have half a mind to take them to small claims court over it.
Also Expedia. Stole money from us. The website said no credit card required but it was a lie. When my wife went to get the rental car they wouldn’t give it to her. Expedia wouldn’t refund her nor give her store credit for another rental. Even ignoring the false advertising, she didn’t get the rental. It wasn’t like something where some.kod accidentally buys something on some.game and you can argue “well you actually received the goods so we can’t refund you” because she literally never received the goods.
But I shouldn’t give this shit any mental energy. It’s ancient history. I’ve moved on. My mental sanity is worth more than the time I’ve spent stressing about it and the money we could potentially get back, but it’s hard to really believe that sometimes.
- Credit card chargeback - get your money back for the unfilled service.
- Call the credit card company and ask them for a “vendor block” so that your card / account can never be used to pay anything for that vendor again.
Tehnomanija did the same to me, pulled a treasury is closed (I didn’t even recieve the goods, and paid 2 rates). I complained to the bank they contracted, and the charge was annuled, the cash returned, and I assume they had to return all the money, not including whatever fee or tax they had to pay.
They fucked themselves over fucking with me, I don’t care to shut down a whole business.
